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Mar 24, 2008 7:15 pm US/Eastern
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Taxpayers Outraged Over LI Superintendent Salaries
ALBANY (CBS) ―
There's outrage and frustration in the suburbs Monday evening as Albany reveals that five Long Island school superintendents earn more than $300,000 a year. In fact, eleven make $250,000 plus! Local taxpayers are questioning the whopping salaries.
Right now homeowners on Long Island are having a tough time making ends meet. Property tax bills are due April 1, of which the largest chunk go to public school taxes. Many parents say they reside here because there are so many excellent schools and teachers. But now they're crying: enough is enough.
"It's just impossible! As a matter of fact I myself just came from a job interview to add a day to my work load, just to pay debts," said Elaine Glazer of Glen Head.
Eleven school chiefs on Long Island make more than $250,000 a year.
To put it in some context, NYC's School Chancellor earns $250,000 a year to manage almost one million students.
While Long Island has 124 separate districts, and more than 11 top Joel Klein's salary, each manages just 11,000 or fewer students, which to many tax payers, it is too much money.
"There's a lot of overlapping payments by school districts for matters than can be centrally paid for," said East Meadow taxpayer Bonnie Link.
Consolidating and streaming is one way to cut districts' costs and the need for so many highly paid school administrators. Nassau County is now floating a plan to create a county team of attorneys to handle all districts' legal work, including contract negotiations with teachers. A way to "break the cycle", backed the group, Long Islanders for Educational Reform.
"You now standardize everything in all the schools so no more corruption, you can't hide the money, you can't steal the money," said Frederick Gorman of Long Island Educational Reform.
But in defending salaries, districts say superintendents are paid proportionate to local teachers, and that schools are amongst the highest achieving in the U.S.
Long Island school districts say another reason for the large salaries is because regional living costs in Nassau and Suffolk counties are higher than the rest of the state.
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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